January 29, 1965
Management is a form of socialist education. If the managerial staff do not go to the lathe shop to work on the 'three sames'[2] and to look for teachers from whom they may learn one or two crafts, then they will live in a state of class conflict with the workers. In the end they will be knocked down like capitalists by the workers. They cannot manage well, if they do not learn and remain ignorant of any productive skill. It is impossible to make other people understand, if they themselves are confused.
The bureaucrats and the workers and the middle-poor peasants are acutely antagonistic classes.
Such people [the bureaucrats] are already or are becoming capitalist vampires
to the workers. How can they have sufficient understanding? They are the
objects of struggle and revolution; socialist education cannot depend on
them. We can only rely on those cadres who are not hostile to the workers
and are imbued with revolutionary spirit.
NOTES
1. Ch'en is an old comrade of Mao, who worked with him in the land reform, Kiangsi, 1930-1 and his 'squatting point' sounds like a factory where he stayed and worked. He was 'sent down' (hsia-fang), but not as a form of punishment.
2. Same food, same accommodation, and same work.
Scanned and formatted by the Maoist Documentation Project